Henri Christophe

Henri Christophe (6 October 1767-8 October 1820) was President of the State of Haiti from 17 February 1807 to 28 March 1811, succeeding Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and King of the Kingdom of Haiti from 28 March 1811 to 8 October 1820, preceding Jean-Pierre Boyer.

Biography
Henri Christophe was born on the island of Grenada on 6 October 1767, the son of a free father and a slave mother, and he arrived in France's colony Saint-Domingue as a slave. He served in the French Army's colored troops during the American Revolutionary War, and he appeared in a statue commemorating the French troops that fought at the Siege of Savannah in 1779, which he had witnessed as a drummer. He gained his freedom from slavery as a young man, and in 1791 he decided to side with Toussaint L'ouverture's rebellious slave army during the Haitian Revolution. Christophe rose to General in 1802 after fighting against the French colonial troops, Spanish troops, the British troops, and French national troops during the revolution, and he assisted in the defeat of Rochambeau's 20,000 French troops (13,000 of whom were killed or died of fever). In 1806, Henri Christophe heard of a plot to kill Emperor Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henri Christophe and Alexandre Petion both agreed to keep the plot secret from the emperor, letting him be killed. Henri Christophe declared himself President of the State of Haiti after the assassination of Dessalines and the end of the First Haitian Empire. However, it would not be long before he proclaimed the Kingdom of Haiti with himself as its ruler, and in 1805 he launched an invasion of Santo Domingo, which was occupied by French troops after the withdrawal of the Spanish. He defeated the French, unifying Hispaniola under Haitian rule, and in 1811 he declared the northern half of Haiti a kingdom, while Alexandre Petion ruled over the democratic South Haiti. On 8 October 1820, the unpopular and infirm and ill King Henri Christophe shot himself in bed rather than face a possible coup, and his family would form a political dynasty; his grandson Pierre Nord Alexis would later become president, and his fourth-great-granddaughter Michele Bennett married President Jean-Claude Duvalier.